I don't know--and the cops are remaining strangely mum on the subject, which isn't exactly reassuring. Put it this way: if I wanted to allay public's fears re "suspicious bags" found under a large Toronto bridge, this (the words of a Toronto cop) is what I would not say:

He said he couldn’t say what the bomb squad found in the bags and didn’t want to disclose information that might harm the ongoing intelligence division investigation.

Over the last few years, SeekersHub has been blessed to serve both Toronto and a growing global online community with educational programs, community service, and social awareness initiatives. In the course of our work, we began to envision a model community of Muslims who make an historic local and global impact through Knowledge and Service Without Barriers. We have already begun to see the impact of this groundbreaking approach, and hope to fully realize this model community through your support, in' sha Allah (God willing).

Providing Knowledge and Service Without Barriers means helping our community members overcome the many barriers they face in becoming better Muslim spouses, parents, children, co-workers, neighbors, and friends. We understand that these barriers vary from person to person over time, and stand committed to working closely with our communities in removing these obstacles, ranging from time, money, location, or resources.

As we continue this historic journey of transforming our communities and selves to handle our busy lives, we are grateful to the Muslim community for its prayers and support. We are reminded of the saying of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (saws) that "Religion is sincere concern." Your sincere concern has allowed us to take meaningful steps towards improving our community locally, and connecting with communities abroad to do the same.

Please join us for our Annual Fundraiser on June 9th, as we share our successes and vision for the future. We hope you will continue to play an integral part in our growth.

One of the 'shlub's noted scholars is none other than Dr. Zaid Shakir. Dr. Shakir, in case you aren't familiar with him, "is amongst the most respected and influential Muslim scholars in the West." How that plays out is that when infidels are around, Shakir acts all schmoozy and interfaithy, but when he gets amongst his own he says stuff like this:

The relevant point for Muslims is that Islam presents an absolutist political agenda, or one which doesn’t lend itself to compromise, nor to coalition-building.

The name Washington Redskins is, as everyone knows, "racist" (what about those Chicago Blackhawks and Atlanta Braves?), so they're looking for a new name. Here are some "progressive"-minded suggestions:

There are a plethora of identity group months listed on the Toronto District School Board calendar. Women's History Month, Islamic History Month, Aboriginal Education Month and many, many others jockey for space in the school year. One of the newest identity group celebrations--call it a Moishe-come-lately: Jewish Heritage Month. Now, it's true that it was officially declared by the Ontario government only last year, but if you think the TDSB is planning to do squat about it, think again. As the Jewish Tribune's Joanne Hill reports, the board is kicking that can down the road. And if it kicks it long and hard enough, maybe it can keep it out of sight for the time being:

TORONTO - When it comes to Jewish Heritage Month, the third time may be the charm for the Toronto District School Board (TDSB).

May was declared Jewish Heritage Month by the Ontario legislature in February 2012. This did not allow enough time to plan any classroom or school activities for May 2012, a TDSB spokesperson told the Jewish Tribune at the time.

This year seemed more promising, with the TDSB’s website stating: “Within the Toronto District School Board, many schools will participate through activities, research, morning announcements and discussions about the Jewish culture, identity, history and heritage.”

However, when asked by the Tribune about specific programs being run in specific schools this year, TDSB Spokesperson Sheri Schwartz-Maltz admitted there weren’t any.
“When you’ve got a big, broad-based system like this it takes some time for people to know which activities would be appropriate,” said Schwartz-Maltz. “So what they’ve done is, they’ve put together this working group of some teachers and some principals, so there will be Jewish Heritage Month activities” in the next school year. “But the focus still this year has been very much, as it has been in the past, for Holocaust remembrance.

“It’s a big board with almost 600 schools and if you’re going to embrace, you have to do it in a right way. So, like I said, if you call me back next year and we still haven’t done anything, then you can be critical.”

The working group is considering activities that may highlight Jewish practices such as keeping shabbat and the Jewish holidays, and the preparation of different types of food, she said, adding that “they have to make it work for a very large, diverse population.”

The Toronto District School Board has also made IHMC welcome throughout its system, publicly recognizing the contributions of Muslim students and educators to the intellectual and cultural wealth of the city and province.

In recent years, the TDSB has encouraged the use of IHMC resources, such as multi-grade workbooks developed to introduce students to Islamic history and culture (and which are also available for downloading from the IHMC website).

Here's one delightful IHMC lesson that the TDSB has apparently encouraged.

Members of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress are demanding that the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights more fully recognize abuses suffered by Ukrainians in Canada and in the former Soviet Union.

When the museum opens next year in Winnipeg, it will downplay the wartime internment of Ukrainians in Canada and virtually ignore communist crimes committed during the Joseph Stalin era, said UCC executive director Taras Zalusky.

“When we saw how, first of all, the internment of Ukrainians (in Canada) during the First World War was not going to have an exhibit, it was only going to be represented by a photo, we were kind of upset,” said Zalusky, who toured the museum in February.

Zalusky also expressed dismay about the museum’s treatment of the Holodomor, a famine created by Stalin policies that led to millions of deaths in the Ukraine in 1932 and ’33. He called Stalin’s actions “intentional famine, genocide.”

“There’s no gallery, there’s only a single panel near the washrooms,” he said, adding the museum is guilty of “a horrendous oversight” by being “entirely silent” on the communist crimes.

Zalusky said the UCC wants a permanent and prominent representation of the Holodomor in its own gallery and a permanent exhibit on Canada’s first national internment camps.

Maureen Fitzhenry, media relations manager of the museum, calls the disagreement a misunderstanding of how the museum is to be organized. She said it is an “idea museum,” not an artifact and collection museum.

“We’re looking at human rights through themes,” she said. “We’re not saying, here’s the Ukrainian thing, here’s the Rwandan thing… it’s not like a collection of grievances.

Instead we’re trying to raise the importance of human rights for everyone, and we’re using different examples, so the Ukrainian Canadian stuff is scattered throughout three different galleries.”...

It is totally a collection of grievances. And I'm not Ukrainian, but even I am offended by Maureen referring to the Holodomor as "the Ukrainian Canadian stuff."Stuff?!?

anatomizes everything that is wrong with her religion but makes a passionate
case for its reform, including the revival of the faculty of ijtihad
(independent thinking and counsel). It is hard to take her argument seriously.
After 1400 years of nearly unchecked imperial conquest, with a holy book
brimming with commandments to kill, mutilate, tax and enslave those it
denominates as “infidels,” with hardline clerics in control of dogma today, and
with terrorist regimes intent on bringing the West to its knees, can one
credibly argue that Islam is even remotely susceptible to wide-scale, peaceful
renovation? Moreover, reform would entail the gutting of myriad canonical texts,
including the Koran, the Hadith and the five schools of Sunni and Shia
jurisprudence, leaving nothing but a rump scriptural archive. Plainly, under the
aegis of “reform,” Islam would cease to exist.

Those who make all Islam their enemy not only succumb to a simplistic and essentialist illusion, but lack any mechanism to defeat it. We who focus on Islamism see World War II and the Cold War as models for subduing the third totalitarianism. We understand that radical Islam is the problem and that moderate Islam is the solution. We work with anti-Islamist Muslims to vanquish a common scourge. We will triumph over this new variant of barbarism so that a modern form of Islam can emerge.

Hasn't it emerged already? It's called Wahhabism, Salafism, Khomeinism and, last but certainly not least, the Muslim Brotherhood.

A day after US Secretary of State set out a vague but hugely ambitious $4 billion economic plan designed to drastically boost the Palestinian economy and help galvanize diplomatic efforts, the Palestinian Authority on Monday summarily rejected the idea of gaining economic benefits in exchange for political concessions.

Slapping down the notion that the PA might be appeased by Kerry’s focus on economic improvements, President Mahmoud Abbas’s economic adviser, Mohammad Mustafa, said ”The Palestinian leadership will not offer political concessions in exchange for economic benefits.” He added, in a statement reported by the Palestinian Ma’an news agency: “We will not accept that the economy is the primary and sole component.”

Mustafa, who also heads the Palestine Investment Fund, said the PA’s priorities are not economic but rather a political framework for the creation of Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital, that also ensures the rights of refugees and a political compromise, the Palestinian news agency added.

Investors are nonetheless more than welcome to “come to Palestine,” the statement added...

Buh bye, flying dollars! Hope you like your new home in the Caymans (or wherever kleptocrat Abbas stows his ill-gotten lucre).

Rabbi Baruch Frydman-Kohl participated in the fourth annual Reviving the Islamic Spirit conference in 2005, which included a number of speakers who are on the record for promoting intolerance and terror.

In an email exchange, the Tribune asked why that event was acceptable to him and whether any of his views have since changed. Also, could it benefit peace-loving Muslims to have someone speak out against Islamism? He replied, “The TBR statement speaks for itself.”

He also offered to have his remarks at the 2005 conference forwarded to the Tribune, adding only that he “spoke at the same time as a local Christian leader.”

Er, come again Baruch? You're a local Christian leader?Is your congregation aware of that fact?

A contrived fear or prejudice fomented by the existing Eurocentric and Orientalist global power structure, which rationalizes the necessity to deploy violence as a tool to achieve 'civilizational rehab' of the target communities (Muslim or otherwise).

So you mean Islamophobia doesn't pertain specifically to a Muslims but includes an animus toward non-Muslims, too?Using that definition, almost everyone who is pro-West/pro-America can be branded "Islamophobic." Which, when you think about it, is the point of defining it this way.

Let's hope and pray that Barbara Hall, Ontario's head "human rights" commissar, who's always on the lookout for new ways to "fix" us (how else to justify her useless commission and cushy sinecure?), doesn't embrace this new definition. That said, given her worldview, there's a pretty good chance she already does.

And so far, in the 21st century, the total is less than one million people killed in war. What we have on our hands here is a miraculous and mostly unsung success story. There will doubtless be more wars, but they may be small and infrequent. We are obviously doing something right. We should figure out what it is, and do more of it.

More of it--oh, you mean adopt the Obama M.O.and drone on and on, all the while announcing that the War on Terror is in its dying days. Yeah, that should to the trick. ;)

If, as that old saying goes, comedy is tragedy plus time (meaning that you can make fun of almost any tragic event so long as you don't do it right away and allow enough time to elapse), then this has yet--and may even never--make the transition:

The controversial Dutch television show has screened a comedy sketch about the brutal butchering of soldier Lee Rigby.

Langs De Leeuw, which last week showed the host sucking milk directly from a young mother's breasts, appeared to make light of the gruesome murder in Woolwich in a spoof Eurovision Song Contest sketch.

The sketch showed two men who had been dressed to resemble Drummer Rigby's alleged killers Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale - waving bloody knives and cleavers at the cameras...

Hilarious it ain't. Sick. Disgusting. Emblematic of Western decadence: absolutely.But a laugh riot? Not by the longest of long shots.

City council has no legal grounds to deny grant money to Pride over the gay festival’s refusal to ban the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, Toronto’s chief lawyer has told Mayor Rob Ford’s executive committee.

In a confidential and frank April report obtained by the Star, city solicitor Anna Kinastowski says she “cannot recommend” that council require Pride to ban the phrase “Israeli apartheid” as a condition of receiving taxpayer funds.

Kinastowski writes: “The term ‘Israeli Apartheid’ does not violate the city’s human rights policy, does not appear to violate the Ontario Human Rights Code, and does not appear to constitute ‘hate’ as the (Supreme) Court has interpreted it and would therefore appear to fall within the realm of potentially ‘offensive’ yet protected speech.”

The committee will again discuss Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) on Tuesday during a debate on the city’s anti-discrimination policy for grant recipients. Pride’s annual grant — about $124,000 last year — will be debated by council in June, only 10 days before the festival begins...

I suspect that if there were a "Queers Against Islamic Gender Apartheid" it would violate the city's human rights policy, it would appear to violate the Ontario Human Rights Code, and it would appear to constitute 'hate' as the (Supreme) Court has interpreted it, and would therefore not appear to fall within the realm of potentially 'offensive' yet protected speech.This being about Zionhass--hatred engendered by and directed at the Jewish state--though, it's okey-dokey with the city's politically correct powers-that-be. That sad reality seems to be resonating with an Official Jew, too:

“I don’t think the question is a legal question — I think the question is one of morality and divisiveness,” said Avi Benlolo, chief executive of the pro-Israel Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies. “And if we want to live in a pluralistic society where we demonstrate respect for one another, then there’s just morality. . . . We’re just saying to the city we don’t think this is socially acceptable.”

Hating Israel? Not socially acceptable? Oh, Avi. Surely you must know that in certain key quarters, not only is it socially acceptable to see Israel as the greatest evil known to man (the latest manifestation of age-old Jew hate), it is pretty much de rigueur.

CAIRO – Eyeing to promote dialogue between followers of different religions and cultures, a major Muslim convention opened in the United States on Saturday, May 25, with the aim of boost tolerance in American society.

"The objective of this event is to promote dialogue between different cultures and faiths to help contribute to a more peaceful and tolerant society," Asim Khan, lead coordinator for the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)'s WHYISLAM Project, said in a press release obtained by OnIslam.net.

"We look forward to welcoming people from all walks of life and to another great event that will draw thousands of people."

Themed “Islam: The Pursuit of Happiness”, the three-day annual convention aims to promote peace and tolerance in society.

Muslim attendants would be offered special lectures and symposiums on how to achieve everlasting happiness.

To this end, sessions would be delivered in different languages including Arabic, Urdu, Bengali and Spanish along with English.

Special sessions would also be dedicated to Muslim women to discuss issues of concern to them.

A host of prominent Muslim speakers are attending the ICNA-MAS convention, including Boston imam Suhaib Webb...

Read more about ICNA and its mission here, and more about Boston's imam and his mission here.

The London mayor argued that gender segregation is part of a strategy by Islamists to promote their ideology.

“This is a sinister political agenda that promotes a sense of grievance and victimhood among a minority of Muslims,” Johnson said.

“The Islamists want universal Shari`ah law, and other mumbo jumbo. Above all, they want power over others: and so they prey on young men who feel in some way rejected by society, and they fill those young men with a horrible and deluded sense of self-importance.

“They tell these people that they are not alone in suffering injustice; that they belong to a much wider group of victims – the Muslims – and that the only way to avenge these injustices is jihad,” he said.

Johnson insisted that Islamists have no allegiance to the western society.

“These Islamist evangelists have no allegiance to the western society they live in and whose benefits systems they abuse: far from it – their avowed intent is to create a sexist and homophobic Muslim caliphate,” he said.

The London mayor urged Britons to distinguish between the ideology of Islamists and the Islamic religion itself.

“We must not give the killers the thing they crave above all – the prize of dividing us,” Johnson said...

A gaggle of Reuters reporters who blame the "Nordic model" for riots in Stockholm make Bruce Bawer gag:

Of all the reports I looked at, the one that most effectively epitomized the asinine, mendacious approach of the Western media to this latest nightmare was a piece from Reuters that had no fewer than eight names attached to it. I would strongly recommend that you read the whole thing; in fact, I would suggest that it be taught in future history courses as a prime example of the high level of duplicity of which the early twenty-first-century Western media were capable when confronted with raw displays of Islamic power on their own turf. Credited to Niklas Pollard and Philip O’Connor, with “additional reporting” by Johan Ahlander, Mia Shanley, Patrick Lannin, and Simon Johnson, writing by Alistair Scrutton, and editing by Janet McBride, the Reuters piece was headlined “Sweden riots expose ugly side of” – no, not of “European immigration policies” or “Islam,” of course, but of the “Nordic model.”

Yes, it’s all the fault of the “Nordic model”: the roots of the Stockholm unrest, Reuters (and virtually every other major Western news organization that deigned to report on the disturbances) would have us believe, lay “in segregation, neglect and poverty,” in years of “fruitless job hunts, police harassment, racial taunts and a feeling of living at the margins.” And so on. Which means, I suppose, that 9/11 revealed the flaws of the American model, and the car-burnings in French suburbs reflect the weaknesses of the Gallic model, and the explosions in Madrid were all about the failings of the Spanish model, and the savage murder of Lee Rigby in London last week…well, you get the idea.

The dispatch from Reuters suggested that Sweden’s “lowered taxes” (which are still absurdly high) and “reduced state benefits” (which are still staggeringly bounteous) are responsible for rising economical inequality and segregation, and thus for the pandemonium in the streets. An Ethiopian-born woman interviewed by Reuters maintained that Swedish kids won’t play with her daughter “because she’s dark.” (There was no mention, needless to say, of the real problem in an increasing number of Scandinavian schools, namely the systematic harassment, and worse, of ethnic Swedish kids by their immigrant-group classmates.) On late-night trains from downtown Stockholm to the suburbs, the Reuters team told us, you’ll see “exhausted-looking Arabic or Spanish speaking immigrants returning home from menial jobs”; an “Asian diplomat” lamented that immigrants in the Swedish capital “are mostly selling hotdogs.”

The point of all this being – what, exactly? That it’s the hard-working holders of low-level jobs who are setting fire to cars and buildings? That it’s legitimate for a newcomer to Sweden to go on the rampage because he’s got to work as a hot-dog vendor? Nowhere was there a hint that the extraordinary history of immigrant success in North America, for example, was written by people who worked themselves up from employment of that very sort. Nowhere, moreover, was there a hint that what counts as poverty in Sweden would be considered remarkable affluence in the hellholes most of these punks’ families hail from. Yes, the Reuters gang acknowledged (fleetingly) Sweden’s generosity to its foreign-born inhabitants, but the implication remained that the free housing and endless handouts somehow just aren’t enough – that the state should find a way to shield them from every variety of professional frustration and personal disappointment, from a failure to land the ideal job to the unspeakable fate of being tired at the end of a long workday...

Well, yes. Isn't that why we here in Canada have a "human rights" apparatus--so the state can shield certain designated victim groups from "professional frustration and personal disappointment"?And the difference between the "Nordic model" and the "Canadian model" is...what exactly?

AL SHUNAH, JORDAN: US secretary of state John Kerry unveiled on Sunday a plan to boost the Palestinian economy by attracting $4 billion in private investment, saying it could transform the lives of the people.

As he seeks to bring Israel and the Palestinians back to the table to negotiate a peace deal, Kerry said it was also imperative to create jobs and meet the hopes of young people for a better economic future.

He has tasked Tony Blair, the Quartet's special envoy to the Middle East, with drawing up a plan to revitalise the West Bank through boosting industries such as tourism, construction, information technology and agriculture.

Blair's plan, being aided by some global business leaders who are giving their time free, could be "ground-shaking," Kerry said.

The group was putting together recommendations for the Palestinian leadership to decide on, aiming to "mobilise some $4 billion of investment"...

Question for John and Tony: why do you think yet another round of "mobilizing" investment will quell the desire to wipe Israel off the map? Won't it only serve to line the pockets of Fatah's kleptocrats du jour?
﻿

Bound to be a tourist magnet--the West Bank's new naqba museum, currently under construction.

We all agree greater sensitivity was called for. While the newsroom stands by its judgment of the relevance of the “Somali”references, numerous reports this week have made little mention of the sources’ background. That first troubling story, which was written in great haste on deadline, was revised shortly after publication with half of the “Somali” references edited out.

“We realize the first version of the story used ‘Somali’ too heavily,” Managing Editor Jane Davenport told me.

“We understand why the community is upset and we apologize.”

My, Jane, that is extra-sensitive of you. I bet Rob Ford would love to get in on a bit of that sensitivity. But since he's fat, white and on the right, I guess it's no way Jose, eh?And speaking of sleazy reporting--Canada's newspaper of record spent a year and a half looking into claims by ten--count 'em ten--unnamed sources that some 30 years ago Rob's bro Doug was into hash (and I don't mean the corned beef variety)? Seriously? Does it seem to you (as it does to me) that the brothers Ford are having a disastrous effect on journalistic integrity/ethics in this city?

“Peace is actually possible, notwithstanding the doubts that some people have because of past disappointments,” Kerry said. “It is our hope that everybody will stay focused on the prize, focused on the goal.”

It should be noted that, in keeping with his own fecklessness, Kerry ate a turkey shawarma.Notwithstanding that Israel is an oasis of functionality in a landscape of Islamic dysfunction, Kerry should mind his own beeswax.
﻿﻿﻿﻿

Iran has fielded a "massive" number of new long-range missile launchers, state TV reported Sunday.

The new weapon components delivered to Iranian military units would allow them to "crush the enemy" with the mass simultaneous fire of long-range surface-to-surface missiles, Defence Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi was quoted as saying.

TV showed footage of him inspecting two dozen launch trucks without missiles at an outdoor site. The report did not specify the type of missile that would be fired, nor more details on the number of launchers deployed.

Some of Iran's surface-to-surface missiles are estimated to have ranges of over 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles), capable of hitting its arch-foe Israel and the U.S. bases in the region.

Vahidi did not specify who was the "enemy" and said Iran would never start a war.

Iran considers both the United States and Israel as enemies. Both have not ruled out a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, which the West suspects are aimed at weapons development. Iran denies the charge...

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that it would help Saudi Arabia dig deeper into deadly outbreaks of a new coronavirus to draw up advice ahead of the annual hajj pilgrimage, which attracts millions of Muslims.

The U.N. agency, which is not currently recommending any restrictions on travel to the kingdom or screening of passengers at airports or entry points, will sent a second team of experts in the coming weeks, WHO director-general Margaret Chan said.

The virus, which can cause coughing, fever and pneumonia, emerged in Saudi Arabia last year and has been found in 33 people there, killing 17. They are among 44 cases and 22 deaths worldwide, according to the WHO, which has called it the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV).

"Without that proper risk assessment, we cannot have clarity on the incubation period, on the signs and symptoms of the disease, on the proper clinical management and then, last but not least, on travel advice," Chan told the WHO's annual ministerial meeting in Geneva.

The WHO, which sent a first team to Saudi Arabia this month, will provide a fresh risk assessment ahead of this year's hajj, which takes place in October.

"We need to get the facts clear and get the appropriate advice to all your countries where your pilgrims want to go to Mecca. It is something quite urgent," Chan said.

Millions flock to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina for the hajj, although pilgrims come and go all year round...

I'm no WHO expert, but given the way they do hajj (see below), my advice would be to skip it this year.

Saturday, May 25, 2013

How dare they get on with life--and, even worse, have the chutzpah to enjoy it (is the obvious implication of this NYT piece)?:

FOR years, conventional wisdom has held that as long as Israel faces the external challenge of Arab — especially Palestinian — hostility it will never come to terms with its internal divisions. The left has sometimes used it as an argument: we must make peace with the Palestinians so that we can set our house in order — write a constitution, figure out the public role of religion. Others have viewed the threat as almost a silver lining keeping the place together: differences among Israeli Jews (religious or secular, Ashkenazic or Sephardic) are so profound, the argument goes, that if the society ever manages to turn its attention inward, it might tear itself apart.

Back in Tel Aviv for a recent visit a year after ending my tour as Jerusalem bureau chief, I was struck by how antiquated that wisdom felt. At a fascinating and raucous wedding I attended and from numerous conversations with a range of Israelis, I came away with a very different impression. Few even talk about the Palestinians or the Arab world on their borders, despite the tumult and the renewed peace efforts by Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been visiting the region in recent days. Instead of focusing on what has long been seen as their central challenge — how to share this land with another nation — Israelis are largely ignoring it, insisting that the problem is both insoluble for now and less significant than the world thinks. We cannot fix it, many say, but we can manage it...

"If you can keep your head when all about you," wrote the poet, "are losing theirs and blaming it on you"...you'd be an Israeli Jew in the year 2013.

Police have reported several arrests since Wednesday. Benjamin Flatters, 22, from Lincoln, was arrested on Thursday after complaints were made to Lincolnshire police about comments made on Twitter that were allegedly of a racisut (sic) or anti-religious nature.

A second man was visited by officers and warned about his activity on social media, according to the police.

The charge comes after two men in Bristol were arrested and released on bail for making alleged offensive comments on Twitter about the murder. A 23-year-old and a 22-year-old, both from Bristol, were held under the Public Order Act on suspicion of inciting racial or religious hatred.

Detective Inspector Ed Yaxley of Avon and Somerset police said: "These comments were directed against a section of our community. Comments such as these are completely unacceptable and only cause more harm to our community in Bristol."

Flatters made "anti-religious" comments? Doesn't Richard Dawkins, for one, do that all the time? I don't see the coppers slapping the cuffs on him. ;)As for so-called unacceptable comments causing more harm--when a couple of homegrown jihadis disembowel a young drummer boy in broad daylight in a London neighbourhood, isn't it natural--and healthy--for people to vent about it? What's "completely unacceptable" isn't the natural venting. It's authorities' attitude to it--that all will be well if only, post-butchery, we can all get back to page 2 in the "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" songbook.Oh, and slaughter in the name of Islam's sky deity: that's completely unacceptable, too.Update:Steyn says:

Not a lot of Muslims want to go to the trouble of chopping your head off, but when so many Western leaders have so little rattling around up there, they don’t have to. And, as we know from the sob-sister Tsarnaev profiles, most of these excitable lads are perfectly affable, or at least no more than mildly alienated, until the day they set a hundred cars alight, or blow up a school boy, or decapitate some guy. And, if you’re lucky, it’s not you they behead, or your kid they kill, or even your Honda Civic they light up. And so life goes on, and it’s all so “mundane,” in Simon Jenkins’s word, that you barely notice when the Jewish school shuts up, and the gay bar, and the uncovered women no longer take a stroll too late in the day, and the publishing house that gets sent the manuscript for the next Satanic Verses decides it’s not worth the trouble. . . . But don’t worry, they’ll never defeat our “free speech” and our “way of life.”

In other words: worry. Worry like crazy. Worry, because if you don't "free speech" and "our way of life" are a goner.

Friday, May 24, 2013

Grant Hutchinson is a former computer programming student at Seneca College.

The 25-year-old was suspended for violating the school email policy by sending offensive emails in March 2012. He was kicked out a year later, before completing his two-year diploma, after pleading guilty to criminally harassing a member of the Seneca administration.

However, he alleges the college discriminated against him due to his mental health diagnoses (depression, anxiety, paranoia and a personality disorder).

Earlier this week, he was granted the chance to plead his case to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario in a hearing that could highlight the fine line post-secondary institutions walk when it comes to guarding community safety versus individual student rights and accommodation for mental-health disabilities.

“My behaviour was directly linked to my mental-health disabilities,” he says. “It shouldn’t take a psychiatrist to realize that.”

Seneca College can’t comment while the case is before the tribunal, said a spokesperson...

I predict Seneca College will be forced to compensate Greg--big time--for failing to "accommodate" his mental instability.

The papers were full of the standard-issue stuff. The Muslim Council of
Britain made the usual assertion that the latest
heinous act committed in the name of Islam had “nothing to do with Islam.”
Baroness Warsi, a Pakistani-English Muslim who serves as “Communities Secretary”
in the current government, painted the familiar pretty
picture of “faith communities coming out together” in the wake of said heinous
act “and showing a unified condemnation of this.” The Guardian ran the
obligatory hand-wringing article
about the “fear of backlash” against Muslims in the wake of the heinous act in
question. (The headline of another Guardian article actually indicated
that there had been “Anti-Muslim reprisals after Woolwich attack”; it turned out
that one man was “in custody on suspicion of attempted arson after reportedly
walking into a mosque with a knife in Braintree, Essex,” and that “police in
Kent were called to reports of criminal damage at a mosque in Canterbury Street,
Gillingham.”) And Ken Livingstone, the loathsome ex-mayor of London (which he
described as “the most successful melting pot in the history of the world and
the city of the free”), warned
those less evolved than himself not to “scapegoat entire communities for this
barbaric act.” This from the sometime host, defender, and chum of Yusuf
al-Qaradawi, who is famous precisely for encouraging such barbaric acts.

Newspaper commentaries on the atrocity added up to a depressing profile of
the pathetic, obstinately reality-challenged psychopathology of the British
elite when confronted with Islamic violence. The prize for sheer inanity of
approach must go to Laborite Dan Hodges, who spent
a whole column in the Telegraph elaborating on the theme that “for me,
yesterday’s barbaric act of terror in Woolwich was literally senseless. None of
what happened actually made any sense.” The murder, he asserted, was “confusing,
horrific, bizarre.” He proceeded to repeat this refrain in one paragraph after
another: “none of it made sense….Still none of it made sense….It didn’t make
sense….It didn’t make any sense….Yesterday was the senseless day.” Reading this
feeble, embarrassing nonsense, one could not help wondering: was Hodges equally
stumped by 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Bali, Beslan, the Boston bombings?...

Clearly, the fact that all this is the fault of ideas embedded in the doctrines of one of the world's great religions is too awful for some to contemplate. (As was, back in the day, the fact that one of the most civilized nations/cultures on the planet, the one which gave us Bach, Beethoven and Goethe, could also have given rise to the Nazis.)Update: Jihadi cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed knows it has something to do with Islam, and he's glad it does!

Asking "Should President Obama end the War on Terror?" is like asking "Should President Kennedy End the Cold War?" In both instances, the war being ongoing and waged eagerly by the enemies of democracy, barring America's abject surrender, it is/was beyond the POTUS's ability to "end." And, BTW, how can the Sgt. Schultz of American presidents (he knows/sees/hears nothing 'bout Benghazi, monitoring reporters' e-mails, the IRS scandal, etc.) be expected to do something on that scale?

Thursday, May 23, 2013

TORONTO — A suspected Tunisian terrorist accused of plotting to derail a VIA Rail passenger train near Toronto said Thursday he wanted to be judged by the “holy book” rather than a “book written by humans.”

Appearing by video link at a downtown courthouse, Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, once again expressed disdain for the Criminal Code of Canada as his case was adjourned until June 3 to allow time for him to find a lawyer.

“I have agreed to have a lawyer, no problem, but I wish that this lawyer will cooperate with me,” he said. “I need the holy book as a reference for my judgment. I don’t want a book written by humans.”...

In the lurid scene of the red-handed knifeman describing his motives for hacking to death a British soldier in broad daylight, perhaps the most chilling aspect for Londoners was the man's unmistakably familiar accent.

Michael Adebolajo, 28, who was filmed wielding a bloody meat cleaver and butcher's knife as the soldier lay dead on the road behind him, was not a maladjusted immigrant like Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but a true Londoner born and bred.In his barrage of threats filmed after the attack, Adebolajo often sounded more like a rapper or gangster film character than an Islamist radical: "Do you think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start busting our guns?" he said.

"Do you think your politicians are going to die? No. It's going to be the average guy like you and your children. So get rid of them. Tell them to bring our troops back so we can - so you can all live in peace."

He and the other suspect, who has not been named publicly, were both British citizens of Nigerian heritage.

Sources familiar with the investigation say both suspects were on the radar of British police tracking Islamist extremism, but authorities had no chance to thwart an attack that required no more preparation than buying a set of butchers' knives.

Schoolmates at Marshall's Park school in the overwhelmingly white north-east London suburb of Romford that Adebolajo attended from 1996-2001, described him as a charismatic and popular kid whose transformation into a killer defied logic.

"He was always a good guy at school (who would) do anything for anyone," schoolmate Darren Marsh wrote on the Facebook page of the local newspaper, the Romford Recorder.

"He was a clever guy but he was cheeky. He acted a bit like a gangster, but I think it was just image. I'd never have seen him as a Muslim extremist."...

But there are other, more tangible radicalizing forces available to -- even seeking out -- disaffected young men in Britain.

A handful of Islamic activists in the U.K. have made it their full-time job to recruit and indoctrinate young British men into an extremist brand of the religion. They preach that the U.K. government is working with the U.S. and other Western nations in a war against Islam. It is the same message espoused and pushed online by al Qaeda.

Radical Islamic activists like London lawyer Anjem Choudary are careful in their street preaching and online propaganda to never specifically call for violence. They know incitement is illegal, and they're smart enough to stay on the right side of the letter of the law -- to be able to continue propagating their message.

But while Choudary and others like him don't publicly call for attacks, they're not shy about defending them, or offering a rational for them.

"As we live amongst you and propagate our belief, it is also our responsibility to warn our neighbors of the potential repercussion of their actions for us all," Choudary said in a statement released to media outlets just a week before Wednesday's attack. He teaches his followers (his almost-weekly London rallies can draw dozens of young men) that attacks on Britain and on British people abroad are caused by "the polices of governments which are vehemently anti-Islam and anti-Muslim and seem hell bent on provoking Muslims."

"Woolwich is a lesson for us all, we must take the role of the UK in Muslim land seriously & its harsh repercussions on the streets of the UK," Choudary tweeted just hours after the attack in south London's economically depressed Woolwich neighborhood, where he spent at least part of his own young life.

Speaking to CBS News Wednesday night, after the murder, Choudary said he thought he might have recognized one of the suspects from his rallies or sermons.

The suspect seen in the video defending the attack on Wednesday may or may not have been influenced by Choudary, but the language he used was straight from Choudary's script.

This is a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam and we condemn this unreservedly," the group said in a statement. "Our thoughts are with the victim and his family. We understand the victim is a serving member of the Armed Forces."

Quran (9:29) - "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

True, it doesn't specify "behead them in broad daylight on a public street with a machete," but the command to fight the infidel is there, and it is duplicitous to pretend that it isn't part and parcel of Islam.

The vast majority of Muslims condemn terrorism because even classical Islamic law explicitly classifies hirabah (terrorism) as a serious sin. In fact, indiscriminate killing and attacks are prohibited. Indeed, the Qur’an (6:151) proclaims: “Anyone who kills a person (except pursuant to law) it is as if he has killed the whole of humanity.”

Moreover, the Prophet Mohammed’s strict rules of engagement even in times of hostility were blunt: “Do not kill women or children or non-combatants.” Such nuances are lost on those with limited knowledge of their religion. Indeed, a 2010 United States Institute for Peace study [PDF] titled Why Youth Join al-Qaeda of more than 2,000 people who were attracted to terrorism confirms this. Colonel John Matt Venhaus, the author of the report, found that most of these youth “have an inadequate understanding of their own religion, which makes them vulnerable to misinterpretations of the religious doctrine.”

I'd say verse 9:29 is pretty clear in what it calls for, wouldn't you?Update: From Bat Ye-or'sIslam and Dhimmitude, p.43:

The Muslim jurists formulated the doctrine of jihad on the basis of the Koran and hadiths. By reason of this origin which binds it to the words of the Prophet and consequently to Allah, this doctrine forms part of an eschatological vision of a war aiming to impose on mankind the will of Allah as expressed by his last messenger. Here, it is important to understand that these two terms are inseparable. The designs of Allah are only revealed by his Prophet Muhammad. Any Revelation other than Islam is false; Allah's religion is Islam (3:17). The doctrine teaches that the Koran is the uncreated, eternal word of Allah. As far as mankind is concerned, Muhammad declared that "the world belongs to Allah and to his messenger." The Islamic community (umma), recipient of this Revelation is perfect. It is chosen by Allah above all other nations...

Its election creates for the Islamic community the duty to take possession of its heritage, the whole world, so that Allah's word, transmitted by Muhammad, will reign supreme. Assumption of this heritage, which belongs to it by divine right, justifies jihad. It is a compulsory command.

Jihad divides the peoples of the world into two irreconcilable groups: the Muslims--inhabitants of the dar-al-Islam, regions subject to Islamic law; and infidels--inhabitants of the dar al-harb (harbis), the territory of war, destined to come under Islamic jurisdiction, either by the convervion of its inhabitants or by armed conflict. Jihad is the Muslim's permanent state of war or hostility by the dar al-Islamagainst dar al-harb, until the infidels' conclusive submission and the absolute world supremacy of Islam...

Yesterday, the beheader with the bloody hands said as much on film:

"We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day," he said in a video clip that was shown on the ITV website. "This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

"I apologize that women have had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same," the killer continued. "You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don't care about you."

Please Visit

Followers

About Me

Scaramouche is my nom de Web. My real name is Mindy G. Alter, and I like to think of myself as a free speecher with a sense of humour. My bailiwick: fighting on behalf of all the good things that free speech helps safeguard, and doing my utmost to highlight the malevolence and imbicilities of those who oppose freedom, whomever they may be.